Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

Strindberg—in the original language or English translation, and he internalized Western sensibilities. He wore Western suits, smoked cigars, drank coffee, ate beef, conversed now and then with foreigners, and appreciated opera. Such a Westernized lifestyle was, for him, entirely natural and entirely comfortable.
    During the years in which Akutagawa was actively writing, 1915–27, the First World War sent Japan’s economy into boomconditions. These were also the years known as “Taish ō Democracy” (in the Taish ō Period, 1912–26), which perhaps might be called Japan’s Weimar Age. After the bitterly-fought Sino-Japanese (1894–5) and Russo-Japanese (1904–5) Wars, Japan had solidified its position in the world order, as a result of which the suffocating tensions of the Meiji Period (1868– 1912) relaxed, liberal tendencies arose in their place, and people sang the praises of modernism. The impact of the Russian Revolution aroused the socialist labor movement. Skirts grew short and the movement for the emancipation of women got started. This liberal climate was thoroughly crushed by the 1929 stock market crash, the ensuing worldwide Depression, and the rise of militarism and fascism, but that all happened after Akutagawa had left the world. With him, we are still in the midst of Taish ō Democracy, liberalism, and modernism.
    Take a step back from Tokyo, in which these revolutionary changes were taking place, however, and the most basic aspects of the life of the Japanese were still being governed by the old indigenous culture. In reality, a world in pre-modern dress still enveloped the ways of the modernized city to which Akutagawa gave representation. Not that this should be cause for surprise: a mere fifty years earlier, samurai had been walking around with swords, their hair done up in to pknots. For 220 years, the Japanese had been locked in their little islands, virtually out of touch with other countries, preserving their unique culture in a system resembling feudalism. Only one generation had gone by since the end of that age, hardly enough time to reshape people’s inner landscapes. Superficial aspects such as new systems could be adopted eagerly (or in some cases reluctantly, through compulsion), but certain basic things remained untouched: sensibility, values, archetypal mental images. In fact, the Meiji government openly promoted a policy supporting precisely such a bifurcation, as represented by the slogan “Japanese spirit, Western technology.” They wanted to incorporate the technological progressiveness and efficiency of Western systems, but they also wanted the people to remain good, submissive Confucianists. That made it easier for them to run the country. In other words, to some degree the dregs of feudalismwere left in place intentionally. Amid this nearly overwhelming sea of indigenous culture, urban culture became increasingly isolated, and Akutagawa was simply one member of a tiny elite. Before long, this began to prey on his nerves.
    Akutagawa successfully imported his propensity for modernism into a fictional world in the borrowed container of the folk tale. In other words, he succeeded in giving his modernism a “story” by skillfully adapting the pre-modern—the medieval tale form that had flourished almost a thousand years earlier. Instead of creating a purely modernistic literature, he first transposed his modernism into a different form. This was his literary starting point, and it was an extremely stylish, intellectual approach. By employing this strategy, he was able to capture the sympathies of a large readership. Had he chosen instead to write modernistic literature as a pure modernist, he would almost certainly have had only the success of a salon writer with a limited, intellectual readership, and his fiction would have quickly run up against its own limitations. Akutagawa had the instinctive (or perhaps strategic)